Institute of Cooperative Management, Bhopal, a training unit under National Council for Cooperative Training, New Delhi, has been selected by Security Exchange Board Of India (SEBI), Mumbai for educating farmers of Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh for participating in agriculture futures market.
The first awareness programme of this series was conducted for 50 farmers at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Bhopal last month.
Inaugurating the programme, Mr V.C. Chaturvedi, G.M. SEBI, said farmers sell their agriculture produce under distress without taking advantage of price upward movement. Price movement of agriculture commodity is so volatile that farmers do not hold their produce to sell in future when price generally goes up.
SEBI official stressed that agriculture commodity market which is now regulated and supervised by SEBI, Mumbai, offers various derivative instruments like “future” and “option” that protects farmers income even in conditions when price falls in market. Government wants farmers to be market savvy and increase their farm income by participating in agriculture commodity future exchanges.
A.K. Asthana, Director, ICM Bhopal a recognized national trainer of commodity future market by MCX Mumbai, opined that future market is very technical in nature so farmers need to be educated before encouraging them to participate in agriculture future market through NCDEX or NMCE.
Due to a complex nature of function of the commodity future market, low marketable surplus, and limited exchange density in rural area, percentage of farming community in commodity future market are insignificant, he underlined.
Jai Kishan Bhatiya, AGM, Kotak Commodity, Indore deliberated on “Price Ticker Board” which show “spot price” and “future price” of agriculture commodity. He guided the farmers on how to participate in commodity future market through authorized sub-broker or broker of authorized agency and take advantage of price signal of commodity future market at the time of taking decision about “what to sow” and also at times “at what rate to sell”.
Yezdi Pir, AGM, SEBI, Mumbai who was also present in the programme said if farmers need to increase their farm income then commodity future market is the best option as it works like market insurance protecting their income. He said SEBI, Mumbai who is regulator of commodity future market has partnership with institutes like IIM, Kolkata , IIM, Bangalore, NCDC, New Delhi, NABARD, Mumbai for educating farmers and other stake holders on commodity future market.